Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

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No 1: Hamlet IV:5 How should I your true love know; No 2: Hamlet IV:5; White his shroud as the mountain snow; No 3: Hamlet IV:5; Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day; No 5: Hamlet IV:5; And will he not come again?

Recordings

Following the iconic series of the complete songs of Schubert and Schumann, Graham Johnson’s latest enterprise traverses the complete songs of Brahms. He is joined here on Volume 2 by the wonderful Christine Schäfer, whose contribution to the Schu ...» More

These songs were written at the request of the celebrated Viennese actor Josef Lewinsky (1835–1907) for his young fiancée, the actress Olga Preicheisen (1853–1935), who was about to play Ophelia in a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Prague. The songs were first performed in the play on 22 December 1873, thus shortly after Brahms composed them. Other roles in Preicheisen’s distinguished career included Gretchen in Faust, Julia in Shakespeare’s Romeo und Julia, and the title role in Schiller’s Maria Stuart.

For such a production it is seems unlikely that the Ophelia songs would be accompanied by a piano. They may have been orchestrated, or scored for an accompanying string quartet, but one can easily imagine these ditties sung unaccompanied in the theatre where they would have been interpolated into the appropriate section of the play and interrupted by speech, rather than heard as a suite of concert Lieder. These piano parts are original Brahms; the fact that they double the vocal line a good deal raises the possibility that they were provided only for rehearsal purposes. For some reason Brahms left the accompaniment for the fourth song, ‘Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloss’, unfinished after the sixth bar. The accompaniment to the fifth, ‘Und kommt er nicht mehr zurück?’ is perhaps the most effective, despite its simplicity. That Brahms accepted such a commission, and at such short notice, is surprising—he must have been a true admirer of Lewinsky and touched by his desire to arrange something special for the girl he loved. The songs are not to be compared in efficacy or inspiration with Richard Strauss’s complex and richly rewarding Ophelia-Lieder of 1918, but they have a haunting quality of their own. They suggest that Brahms the seasoned theatre-goer knew something about incidental music, and how to write for non-professional singers.